The Trumpets

Those who teach that the Church must go through the Great Tribulation and face the wrath of God which is coming upon the earth try to identify the last trump of I Corinthians 15 with the seventh trumpet in the Book of Revelation. I see great difficulties in paralleling these two trumpets.

First of all, the trumpet that sounds at the time of the Rapture of the Church in I Thessalonians 4:16 is called the "trump of God." In Revelation the seventh trumpet is the trumpet of the seventh angel.

The trump of I Corinthians 15 is used to proclaim an event that happens in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye. Paul said, "I'll show you a mystery. We'll not all sleep, but we'll be changed in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, at the last trump." On the other hand, the seventh trump of the Book of Revelation will cover a period of days. Revelation 10:7 says, "But in the days [plural] of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as He hath declared to His servants the prophets."

The last trump of I Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4 will be a trumpet of glory. We shall be changed and made into His image and caught up to meet the Lord in the air. However, the seventh trumpet of the Book of Revelation is continually referred to as a woe. In Revelation 8:13 the angel said, "Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabitants of the earth by reason of the other three voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!" The angel says this at the end of the fourth trumpet. So, the three "woes" refer to the fifth, sixth, and seventh trumpets. At the end of the fifth trumpet (Revelation 9:12), the angel declares, "One woe is past; and, behold, there come two woes more hereafter." This refers to the sixth and seventh trumpets. In Revelation 11:14 the angel declares that the second woe is past and, behold, the third woe comes quickly. Then we go right into verse 15, the seventh trumpet, which is actually the third woe.

The Rapture of the Church and being changed into His glorious likeness is far from a woe. It would only be a woe if I didn't go! Thus, I see great difficulty in identifying the seventh trumpet of Revelation 15 and the List trumpet of I Corinthians 15 as one and the same, because the results and the time factors are so different. In his New Testament Greek commentary on I Corinthians 15:52, Dean Henry Alford declares that no reason exists to define the last trump to be the seventh trumpet of Revelation. [1] He also says that there's no reason to assume that there are no trumpets after the last trump of I Corinthians 15.

[1] Henry Alford, Alfords Greek Testament (Grand Rapids: Guardian Press).